I am constantly surprised at what people say when the answer they are seeking is the obvious one, it's simple and they don't accept it.

It's kinda like the Customer who is buying a car and you hit them right on the number on the first pencil... they look at you like you are screwing them! "It can't be this easy" they are thinking or "I'm paying too much."

In Fixed Operations it's the same. If a Customer needs a repair done and you go back to them with a repair that obviously needed to be done, it's simple and you can take care of it right away, they look at you kinda funny and say "Really, that's it?"

I have a better one than that for you.

Say you're the Service Manager and you are measuring the Daily 5 and notice that your top Advisor Bill the Pill was off in Hours Per Repair Order yesterday. Yoo look at Bills total RO Count and see that instead of him writing his usual 14 ROs for the day, he only wrote 7 ROs. The obvious answer is that with half the number of ROs you can expect Bill to produce half or less than his normal daily HPRO. Makes sense.

Now the prudent SM will go and pull a few ROs and make sure that a one day anomaly stays a one day anomaly...but the Obvious Answer is that you can expect Bill the Pill to be back on track with a normal days RO count.

If you are the Dealer Principal and you are looking at say...oh I don't know...Fixed Operations Yearly Gross Profit and it's the middle of November and you are not happy with the Year...chances are that you can expect that December will be just as disappointing as the previous 11 months and the Obvious Answer is to find a cause and take action, right? You would not need a research grant to figure this out.

Yet...as we speak... (fill in the blank)

Bottom Line...Just Because It's The Obvious Answer (And It's Simple) Doesn't Make It The Wrong Answer!